


Circles of Ash

by Deannie



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-05-09
Updated: 2006-05-09
Packaged: 2017-12-13 03:40:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/819536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deannie/pseuds/Deannie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam gets to go back to his normal life now, right? And Dean's okay with that, really. (set during the pilot)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Circles of Ash

**Author's Note:**

> _Takes place during the pilot_  
> 

Dean wasn't surprised. Not really. He pulled up to the curb in front of Sam's glorified dorm and shut off the engine as Sam all but sprang from the car. He just couldn't wait to get back to his so-called normal life.  


"Call me if you find him." It sounded like he might actually answer that call--not like any of the others Dean had tried to make since Sam had left home. "Maybe I can meet up with you later, huh?"  


"Yeah, all right," Dean replied, knowing he sounded like he was trying too hard.  


Like that was ever going to happen. But Sam _should_ be turning his back on his crazy relatives, right? This was what Dean had always wanted for him--away from the hunt, at least he'd be safe....  


Dean watched Sam pat the Impala with absent affection and turn his back on him. Again. Probably for good. Dean turned the key in the ignition, getting ready to leave this story behind. But something inside him just couldn't take off without giving it one more try.  


"Sam!"  


Did Sam seem to turn around just a little bit too fast--like he _wanted_ to be invited along? Dean smiled winningly. "You know, we made a hell of a team back there."  


"Yeah." Sam said the word, he even had the smile. But there was also that apology in his eyes... He wasn't going anywhere--except away from his family.  


And Dean told himself he wasn't surprised. Not really.  


He shook his head and threw the Impala into drive, heading out without a backward glance. Go to Colorado. Find Dad. That was what he was left with, and as always, it'd be enough.  


At least Sam would be okay. He'd have his normal life, and Dean tried to ignore the bitterness that welled up at the thought. That was what he'd always tried to give Sam, right? Something like normal. _He_ was never going to have it, so somebody should. A wife, kids, the white picket fence...  


He found himself laughing coldly as he reached over and turned up the stereo to tune out his thoughts. Figured. Twenty-two years to the day... Mom. Now Sam. God willing, not Dad, too.  


No. No, he'd go to Colorado and he'd find Dad and everything would be fine.  


And he wasn't bitter--really. It was just... He'd _missed_ his little brother. Maybe he'd stupidly thought that once Sam remembered how good they were together, he'd come back. He'd at least call. Write. Something. That last fight between Sam and Dad had hurt to watch, but what was worse was the years of unanswered voicemails, the worry. He'd always been able to watch Sam's back and to have him turn on them like that...  


Dean looked through the rearview mirror at his brother's apartment building, wondering wistfully whether Sam would bother to call him when he got married--  


\--and stopped dead, his foot on the brakes bringing the Impala to a rough stop.  


A flash of electricity in the upper window. Like a faltering lightbulb...  


Twenty-two years to the day.  


"Fuck."  


He smacked the front wheel into the curb as he parked, slammed the door without caring if it locked behind him, and ran for the back of Sam's building. Faster that way. No security door....  


_The smell of firewood... and something else..._  


Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck...  


A hard kick was all it took to snap the flimsy lock.  


"Sam!?" Upstairs. It was always upstairs.  


"No! _Jess!_ "  


"SAM!" On the bed. Cringing, curling, fighting... Fuck. "Sam!" Get him up, get him out--heat and flames attacked him, fighting him as Sam fought him. Jess on the ceiling--had Mom looked like that? Did Sammy remember?  


_"Take your brother outside as fast as you can. And don't look back! Now, Dean. Go!"_  


"We gotta get out," Dean screamed, trying to drag Sam out of the room. God, moving his brother had never been this hard before! "Come _on_!"  


"No!" Sam, fighting like a madman, not squirming and crying in soot-covered blankets. _It's okay, Sammy._ And there was no waiting outside for hard, warm arms to scoop them up this time, either. Just get Sam out. Keep him safe.  


There were voices in the hall as Dean forced his brother out the back way. Scared, surprised, angry.  


"Fire!" Dean's throat was already sore from smoke and fear. Like last time. "Get out! There's a fire!"  


 _Damn it, Sam!_ His brother was still fighting to get back inside, to save her, to do _something_. But that last burst of flame that had chased them from the bedroom should have been a sign that there was nothing they could do. Nothing Sam could do. Dean could do what he always did. Pull him out, pull him through, pull him along in a life Sam couldn't possibly want.  


"Come on, Sammy." Murmuring now because he didn't have a voice left to shout, as they stumbled out into the night with the rest of the refugees. Around to the front of the house, where the flames shot out of that second-story window in a bizarre parody of a bad childhood. He settled Sam on the hood of a car, shivering as he remembered the feel of Dad's beloved Impala-- _his_ Impala--safe and solid and cold under him all those years ago. Sam sat unresisting, thank God. The time for fighting to get back to the flames and the ash was gone now.  


But Sam was losing it, staring at that window as if he could _think_ her safe. He was glassed over and shuddering, and he wrapped his arms around himself like he had no one to hold on to... and Dean couldn't give him what he needed. Not now, not twenty-two years ago. A son or a brother was a poor substitute for what they'd lost. So he stepped away, one eye on the shaking wreck on the hood of that car, and surveyed the scene.  


Everyone was out. No screaming for anyone else that was loved or wanted or needed, though people sat coughing their lungs out on the steps and the curb and the cars that weren't the one he'd allotted to his brother. Sam had stopped moving, stopped fighting, stopped screaming, now... just the way Dad had.  


Seven minutes. That was how long it took the firefighters to get there. Sam's apartment was half-gone by then; the flimsy, cheap, old boarding house's innards burned faster and harder than Dad's sturdy two-story had. The adobe shell was sooty and largely intact, but the bedroom floor had made a hell of a bang collapsing.  


As the fire trucks arrived, and the building continued to burn, Dean watched the people around him, watched his brother, and listened to words that had already been spoken by others when he was just a kid, and his ears were shocked by a different loss.  


"I don't know! Electrical fire. That's what I'm betting."  


"The lights were flickering. Right before."  


"Did you hear? There was someone _in_ there!"  


"Oh my God! That's so horrible."  


"...I don't know. All I heard was a shout..."  


Mary. Jess. It didn't matter the name that was shouted in that hopeless scream. It only mattered that the bastard had gotten to them again.  


"We're all in danger," Dad had said on the voicemail. And somehow, Dean hadn't really thought Sam was included in that anymore. He was supposed to be gone, severed, cut off from the insanity and the hunt and the danger. He'd rejected that--rejected _them_ \--and all that pain should have counted for something.  


God, Sam had always looked so happy, those times he and Dad had come up and checked on him. (Spied on him, actually.) But he'd had a smile that Dean hadn't seen since Sam was a kid. A carefree swing in his long-legged walk. He'd had friends. A girlfriend, even... He'd been _safe_ , damn it.  


And Dean had been a fool.  


Why would he ever think this would end for any of them? Why would the demon turn its back on Sam just because Sam had turned his back on the family? Why did Dean let himself believe that Sam would ever be safe without someone there to look after him?  


And that someone was him--it should have been all along. Dean turned from the dwindling fire to find Sam missing from the hood of that anonymous car, and a moment of panic seized him. Like waking in the night, four years old, and rushing to the playpen that was Sammy's crib, crawling in to curl around his little brother. To protect him.  


_You have to take care of your brother, now, Dean. We're all he has left._  


I'm _all he has left._  


But there Sam was, half a block down the street, shivering in a night too warm for the chills and leaning over the surprisingly open trunk of the Impala. Sam always was good with a lockpick. The random thought calmed Dean down, and he forced himself not to run as he approached.  


The face that met his when he arrived at the car was hard and pained and cold and _Dad_. Dean shivered in the nonexistent cold his brother had found, and watched as Sam pulled back the bolt on the shotgun, loading a cartridge into the barrel. It was a useless gesture, but it was all Sam could do now. Survive... and prepare.  


And find the bastard who had done this to them again.  


Dean nodded in unspoken agreement at the determination in Sam's eyes, and died a little as he heard the last vestige of his brother's normal life die out in Sam's ashy pronouncement:  


"We've got work to do."  


* * * * * * *  
The End  



End file.
